


Cruel to be Kind

by AVegetarianCannibal



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s01e08 Fromage, M/M, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-17 06:23:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21049775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AVegetarianCannibal/pseuds/AVegetarianCannibal
Summary: Hannibal realizes how he truly feels about Will. It's a dilemma, and cruelty is the solution. Can Will understand what's happened?





	Cruel to be Kind

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [抑制温柔](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21498259) by [amazingwoods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amazingwoods/pseuds/amazingwoods)

> For @FreshKidNerdLawyer on tumblr

When Jack Crawford walks into his office, Hannibal can hardly bring himself to acknowledge him. He doesn't want to hear him say the words. _Will Graham is dead._ The longer he can delay hearing the news, the longer Will Graham exists in a space of reality where he is neither dead nor alive. Or perhaps both. The Schrodinger's cat of friends.

Crawford looks grim. Hannibal tries to divide the next second into its units of Planck time. There are 10^43 moments where Will is still alive... or not entirely dead.

He already misses Will so intensely that he conjures him into existence.

Of course he is only a figment. If he were truly there, would Crawford look like he bore all the world's bad news upon his shoulders? A segment of Hannibal's memory palace has extruded itself into the fragile state of the real world to deposit this specter of Will Graham in his office, so beautiful and alive and forever unreachable. Hannibal finds himself wishing he had kissed Will while he was still alive, and the thought makes his eyes sting with tears.

It's only when Will sits down on his desk and smiles with achingly familiar softness that Hannibal realizes he's truly there.

"I feel like I've dragged you into my world," Will says.

"You have," Hannibal says. He feels the feverish warmth radiating from Will. He cuts off the smile that wants to twist his lips into gratitude. "And I don't think I can ever forgive you for it."

***

Will calls Dr. Lecter's office the next morning, but of course he's not there. People died there. Dr. Lecter almost died there. It's still a crime scene. Of course Hannibal wouldn't be there even if he were ready to go back to work.

He considers calling his personal number but doesn't like the prospect of not reaching him a second time. Instead, he drives to Dr. Lecter's townhouse after stopping for a bag of fresh bagels.

When the door opens, Will puts on a big smile and holds up the bag. "I know it's not a protein scramble but sometimes a belly full of carbs is more comfort--"

He moves to step inside, but Dr. Lecter stands firmly in the doorway. His face is pure stone except for where it's bruised and swollen.

Will suddenly feels unsure of himself. "I-is it too early?"

"It's best we don't socialize," comes the stiff-sounding reply.

It comes like a slap that knocks the breath out of him. "For how long? I don't understand. Is this about Tobias Budge or-or something else?"

"I made a mistake," Dr. Lecter says. "I befriended you as a way to get you to open up during our therapy appointments, but I didn't anticipate how far you would take it. You were more desperately lonely than I realized."

"I--"

He doesn't know what else to say. His mouth hangs open while Lecter just stands there, looking at him as if they'd never met before this very moment.

No. That's not quite true. If he were looking at a stranger, there wouldn't be such hatred in his expression. The contempt burning there is fueled by an intimate knowledge of just how contemptible Will truly is.

"I'm sorry," Will hears himself say.

The door closes in his face.

***

Hannibal tells his therapist at the earliest opportunity that he is no longer pursuing a friendship with Will Graham. He hadn't planned on saying anything about it, as he doesn't need to discuss what he already knows in detail, but he finds himself taking a weighty stone off his chest and leaving it on Dr. Du Maurier's pristine coffee table.

"For professional reasons," he says with practiced cool. "It's best not to mix friendship and work."

She inclines her head toward him. "Are you attracted to Will Graham?"

Hannibal considers potential answers to Dr. Du Maurier's question as he would a book of fabric swatches when ordering new bespoke suits. There are a dozen choices or more, none inherently wrong or right, only more or less fitting to the final design.

She gives him a small smile as she folds her hands over her knee. He raises his brows, curious.

"Sometimes," she says, "the space between the question and the answer is as informative as the answer itself."

"Apparently you find it more so," he says.

She shrugs with only the expression on her face. "You pointed him at a murderer."

"I informed him--doctor to FBI profiler--where he might find a murderer."

The smallest candle flame of triumph flares in her serenely blue eyes. "Because he told you he kissed someone."

Hannibal blinks. It galls him to say it, but: "Yes."

"Are you attracted to Will Graham?" she asks again.

"Yes," he says. It's something that rarely happens to him, but his heartrate increases.

Dr. Du Maurier glances at her watch, then gives him an artificially bright smile. "Shall we pick this up at our next session?"

He nods once, but says nothing. The crushing stone has found its way back into place.

***

He feels feverish as he sits in Jack Crawford's office. Seconds tick by in geological timescales. His head is screaming at him, the pain worse than any migraine.

Lecter paces behind him, studying the newest case board. Will has no idea why the asshole is even here, working on the case with them. Now that all pretense of therapy has been dropped, what's the point? He's worse than useless. Whenever Jack finally shows up, Will plans to say as much.

Will downs two more aspirin with a big slug of black coffee. The pain is so intense, he doesn't care to hide it anymore. He rubs his temples and moans softly.

"You should get that checked out," Lecter says.

Will snorts. "We're not friends. What the hell do you care?"

"I'm still a doctor," Lecter says. "Additionally, you're a danger to others."

Will half turns in his seat to glare at him. "Because of a headache?"

"Because of what you are," Hannibal says, his voice low. "You thrilled at taking Hobbs's life. You wanted to experience the same sensation again when faced with Stammets. Did you let Budge go because you recognized a like spirit? There is a dark pit in you, Will. A seed or an egg... and it has been growing."

Will's vision blurs as his head roars. It's like oceans of pain with waves crashing inside his skull, clawing at the inside of his bones, freezing the pulsing fat of his brain until it crackles.

Yet even as his sight fails him, he can all too easily picture the monstrous seed in the center of his mind.The waves ebb and inky black roots seep out of the seed's leathery husk and spread through the convolutions of his brain. As they grow, they begin to resemble thorns. Or antlers. They pierce his skull from the inside and push through his hair. They spread outward until he begins to look like the ravenstag of his nightmares.

"Why didn't you shoot the man who stabbed you?" Hannibal asks, but his voice is coming from a monster.

Like him, it has proud, dangerous antlers, but it has the body of a man... gaunt, covered in the same skin that contained the seed. Its face, even with its blank silver eyes, is unmistakably Hannibal's.

"I didn't want to love killing," Will says, or thinks he says. He can't tell anymore, because rage is outgrowing everything else inside him.

With a feral scream, he rears up and gores the Hannibal-creature with his antlers, impaling him as Hobbs impaled his victims.

The creature gives him a tender look and reaches out to caress his cheek. "You beautiful thing... How I wish it could be different."

***

_You beautiful thing._

Hannibal sits by Will's hospital bedside, not quite touching his hand but keeping as close as possible. He is, indeed, beautiful. Even now with his hair more unkempt than usual and his face blotchy and wan. He looks like a dream-thing, fallen here, where he shouldn't exist at all but by some miracle does.

When the need to touch overcomes him, to reassure himself that Will is there and alive, Hannibal fusses with the IV line and oximeter on his finger, making sure that everything is attached and working properly.

Jack Crawford comes by, but only goes as far as the doorway. "Fever?" he asks.

"Gone, finally," Hannibal says. "It's anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis."

He's known for over a week and suspected for a bit longer, but then it seemed like an entrance to Will's mind he'd happened upon by chance. The fever could have been a catalyst for so much, if he hadn't sent Will after Tobias Budge and nearly lost him.

Crawford waits as long as he can, although not as long as would be considered polite. "Do his doctors anticipate he'll wake up soon?"

Hannibal checks Will's IV again. "I'm not leaving his side, Jack."

Crawford sighs. "I need a psychoanalyst--"

"You have Alana Bloom's contact information," Hannibal says, cutting him off. "I'm not leaving his side."

***

When Will opens his eyes, he's aware of a few things all at once. Primary is that his mouth and throat are painfully dry. Along with that is the smell of some kind of food with spices that he recognizes as evocatively Chinese.

And then there is Dr. Lecter slumped and softly snoring in a chair beside his bed. He looks much as he did at Abigail's bedside--reassuringly soft and blatantly harmless, cast in pale colors that blur at the edges. His overall shape is that of a friend.

"Fevers can bring delusions," he says, his voice cracking.

Dr. Lecter sits up, going from sleep to perfect awareness seemingly instantly. He's on his feet and pouring water into a cup that he then hands to Will. He doesn't even look groggy.

"Fevers can also bring clarity," he says. He glances at Will, then looks away as if he's suddenly shy.

"Mine brought both," he says. He takes a long, slow breath and sips his water. "I just need to sort out which was which... what I imagined and what was real. Did I imagine our friendship?"

"No." Simply said. No hesitation.

"Did I imagine you telling me we aren't friends?" he asks.

"No."

Dr. Lecter walks across the room, busying himself with a thermal tote bag and porcelain dishes that most certainly did not come from the hospital.

Will takes another breath. "Did you make me dinner?"

A long list of ingredients is rattled off, but Will hardly cares beyond the fact that they amount to chicken soup.

As they sit down to eat, Will continues unwinding reality from the tenacious thorns of his fever. His brain was boiling, but it's calm now. When Dr. Lecter... when _Hannibal_ thinks he's not being watched, he looks at Will the same way he looked at him when he survived Tobias Budge. It's the way Hannibal looked before he brought the shutters down. Before he hid.

"I see you," Will says. Hannibal looks up from his soup, startled. Will smiles at him and reaches across the table to touch Hannibal's hand. "I see me, too."

In the shadows that lean into the room and in the dim light that bleeds through the edges of the curtains, it's not difficult to sense a faint outline of antlers growing from Hannibal's head, or from his own.

Hannibal finally returns his smile.

  
-end-


End file.
